311 is bursting from the Hive and returning to the road.
After keeping fans entertained with their Live from the Hive streaming series over the past year, the “Down” rockers are launching a real-life tour this Saturday in Camden, New Jersey. As frontman Nick Hexum tells ABC Audio, he reckons the outing will be 311’s “best-looking and best-sounding tour ever.”
“We keep evolving our live production to have really cool visuals and keep making the sound better,” Hexum says. “There’s just always little ways where you can tweak and evolve.”
While they were sidelined from the road, 311’s streaming shows allowed Hexum to rediscover a few deep cuts in the band’s catalog. Between that and not having a new album to promote, Hexum predicts some set list experimentation on this tour.
“The best way to keep the shows fresh is to rotate more different songs, special things that people will be really excited and glad they were there for, and more variation from night-to-night,” he says.
311 will also be taking an in-person/virtual hybrid approach to the tour, as select shows will stream live online, as well.
“There’s plenty of people who for whatever reason can’t travel, can’t go to a show,” Hexum says. “So to be able to actively include them in our community, that feels really good.”
Hexum gives a special shout-out to the 311 road crew, which was able to master the technology needed for streaming.
“It was like telling them, ‘OK, quick, learn a new language,'” Hexum says. “They did it very well, so now we see that this is just something that can be a regular part of what we do.”
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